Do your duty: Help Scouts by signing petition

Millions of Americans believe a vote taking place this week could mean the end of the Boy Scouts of America – one of the last truly great American institutions, which for 100 years has prepared tens of millions of boys for responsible manhood.

This Monday through Wednesday, the organization’s board of directors will vote on whether or not – because of relentless pressure from homosexual activists – to abandon its decades-old policy excluding avowed homosexuals from becoming adult Scout leaders or Scouts.

The policy change under discussion, Smith explained, would end the national organization’s decades-long moral standard and, instead, defer to the local chartering organizations to decide what their own membership standards will be – “consistent with each organization’s mission, principles or religious beliefs.” In other words, the BSA would abandon its prohibition on homosexuals and every local Boy Scout troop or Cub Scout pack could do whatever it wanted.

In response, traditionally oriented and faith-based organizations and individuals are warning that this change will spell nothing less than the total unraveling of the Boy Scouts of America. A new petition by WND explains the reasons – some of them shocking – that such a policy change would indeed endanger the Scouting organization America has known and loved for a century.

Whereas, after years of relentless pressure from homosexual activists – in the form of lawsuits, boycotts, defamation and intimidation – the Boy Scouts of America corporate leadership has announced it is considering abandoning its century-old policy of excluding avowed homosexuals from becoming adult leaders and scouts;

Whereas, just six months ago BSA national spokesman Deron Smith publicly affirmed – after a long internal study of the issue – that the Boy Scout organization’s moral policy excluding homosexuals “is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts”;

Whereas, now, under intense pressure, that same spokesman, Deron Smith, says the organization is considering abandoning what six months ago was “absolutely the best policy”;

Whereas, major corporate donors to the Boy Scouts of America, including UPS and Merck, under relentless pressure and intimidation from homosexual groups, have told BSA they will discontinue their funding unless the organization abandons its policy excluding homosexuals;

Whereas, two BSA board members – James Turley, CEO of Ernst & Young, and Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T – are pressuring the youth organization to admit “gay” scoutmasters and scouts, and at least one of them, Turley, has a very close relationship with the Obama White House;

Whereas, the Boy Scouts of America – like the Roman Catholic Church – has a long history of hundreds of sexual predators becoming adult leaders and exploiting their positions of authority and trust to sexually molest youths in their care – including one case settled in 2011 where a jury awarded the Scout victim $18.5 million;

Whereas, abandoning its longstanding policy, which amounts to an open invitation to avowed homosexuals to become scoutmasters and other adult leaders, would only encourage and enable more such sexual-abuse episodes;

Whereas, the United States Supreme Court in 2000 specifically upheld the Boy Scouts’ right, as a private organization, to maintain its policy excluding homosexuals;

Whereas, the proposed policy change would eliminate this legal protection the Supreme Court afforded the Boy Scouts, throwing the doors wide open for homosexual groups, the ACLU and others to sue every individual Boy Scout troop that doesn’t want a homosexual scoutmaster;

Whereas, the BSA’s abandonment of its morals-based policy will result in the exodus of large numbers of Scouts, Scout families and potential Scouts who have already said they will walk away from the Boy Scouts forever, claiming they can neither accept homosexuals as fit leaders and role models for their boys, nor can they send their boys camping with a man they know to be openly homosexual;

Whereas, about 70 percent of Boy Scout troops are sponsored by churches and faith-based organization like the Southern Baptist Convention, whose president, Fred Luter, has already said publicly that if the BSA abandons its moral policy it will “lose a whole lot of our support,” and that, in fact, “a lot of [Southern Baptist churches] will just pull out”;

Whereas, the Boy Scouts is one of the very last major institutions in America to uphold such traditional, God-based morals – indeed, most believe the organization has been so spectacularly successful for the past century precisely because of its ability to appeal to a higher authority to which we all are accountable, as exemplified in the “Scout Oath” in which every Scout promises to do his “Duty to God,” including living a life that is “morally straight”;

Whereas, in the words of Robert Gates, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency: “I don’t think there’s any organization in the world, certainly not in the United States, that better prepares young men for leadership in this country than the Boy Scouts of America – in teaching leadership skills, in teaching values, in teaching importance of standing up for what’s right”:

Therefore, we the undersigned, urgently request that the board members and financial supporters of the Boy Scouts of America “stand up for what’s right” and honor the God-based moral standards that have made the Boy Scouts the most successful, important and loved youth organization in history. Not to do so will likely result in the end of the Boy Scouts as we have known it.